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Monday, 11 February 2013

I love mopeds, so I built my own...

Jerry putting his 'Coccinella' (ladybird) through her paces outside Wemoto

Here is a unique and cool rebuild story from Jerry, motorcycle and moped lover extraordinare - and what a beautiful machine he has built. He came in to see us with it at Wemoto last week and here is the story in his own words...

The fantastic prices that certain classic mopeds are now fetching also heavily influenced my decision, as I couldn't afford to buy another of my first proper moped, a Fantic Ti50...which I sold for £75...but that's another story.

Big wheeled, retro and vintagey...

The story of this build started with my friend's beach cruiser pushbike which had lovely cream tyres, then I discovered and bought on ebay an amazing pair of alloy MTB girder forks. Slowly a big wheeled vintagey retro moped plan started to hatch.

Half man - half bicycle

Old Raleighs have pushbike front brakes and others use pushbike rims. So, I thought, why not go half bicycle? I should add that I am not a heavy man.

Initially designed with a Tomos A3 engine, I changed this to a Puch E50 type along the way, due to parts availability and the discovery that there is a whole world of tuning goodies out there.

Research revealed that the best engine was the 70s kids scrambler, the Puch magnum x - 4hp, 17mm carb, kickstart.

I built the frame up from bicycle parts at the front, magnum x around the engine, and a homemade rear end and swing arm.

The steering head angle, wheelbase etc I just copied from my CG125, as I
know that it works.

California Dreamin'

After fabrication of all the little incidental bits, came the first start-up - which was rather underwhelming due to a clapped out small end and leaky carb and a general reluctance to rev cleanly.

So a new crank/con rod assembly (only £55!) went in, and while inside I matched the transfer ports and replaced the broken dykes top ring (the only place I found to stock these was in California, the excellent 1977 mopeds shop).

After some fettling it's all good

The biggest headaches of the build were the throttle cable and gearing - this was a matter of guesswork which finally involved the only outsourced bit of work, a special rear sprocket carrier, allowing me to use regular Puch Maxi items on the magnum hub. This gave me a huge amount of options.

Time for tea

Keep it simple is a mantra I fully buy into, the bike having one wire to the coil, then an HT lead to the plug. Less to go wrong, and the kill switch is a hand over the air filter (coffee jar lid and tea strainer). I found that vintage tea strainers seem to have a finer mesh...

The most satsfying part was building the rear wheel, I had never done this before, and it was good fun. Discovering that the bike weighs 35kg wet was brilliant....well that makes a 70kg Fs1e seem lardy!

Parts list:

tank - Italjet bambino

shocks - raleigh RM5, grips - Mobylette

engine and coil - Puch Magnum x

A big thanks to the guys at Wemoto for their knowledge and patience with all the cables bearings chain etc that had to be measured and referenced, I can't recommend them highly enough."

Thanks so much for this great story Jerry, glad we could help and good luck with the next project!

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